It's Not Perfect but...

A little less conversation, a little more action please

Dilraz Kunnummal

The Indian media faced a lot of criticism following the broadcasts of the 26/11 Mumbai terror Attacks. The question now is how it can be regulated. And if the government steps in to regulate the Indian media, will we be giving in to censorship. Other instances where the media has behaved irresponsibly include the Arushi murder case and the Gujjar agitation.

During the Mumbai attacks, every channel had an exclusive of how the NSG was working to solve the crisis. It even gave away hideouts of hostages and the terrorists were able to wait at the exit points and kill them. Every move taken by Indian commandoes were telecast live. It was called ‘TV terror’. The channels seemed to be in a constant struggle for TRPs and were aggressive, to the point of making factual errors and being melodramatic.

"One of the ill effects of unrestrained coverage is that of provoking anger amongst the masses," said K.G. Balakrishnan, the chief justice of the Supreme Court of India, during a conference on terrorism in New Delhi.

In her defense, Barkha Dutt defended herself and other channels by saying that they were not neither prepared for such an attack nor were there any directives given by the government. She also said that media would welcome a framework for coverage of sensitive events.

In June 2007, police of four states, Delhi, Rajasthan, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh filed affidavits in an effort to appease the Supreme Court, blaming media for repeated telecast of certain clippings which worsened the Gujjar-Meena quota reservation agitation and led to more violence. Rajasthan DGP AS Gill said that the television media could have helped spread the violence to far-flung areas. The Deccan Herald quoted him as saying, “The manner of telecast by the 24X7 news channels was also perhaps a contributing factor to the spread of violence to places beyond those where blockade calls were given”. Gill also asked the court to ask the Indian government to “issue direction to the government to rein in the audio-visual media in the better interest of society”. According to him, the telecasts did not help in anyway to bring about peace or harmony.

This also brings about the question of what should be telecast. Are gory images acceptable during prime time news, when children can be watching? Or should warnings be given in case the images are gruesome.

There should also be some regulations to decide what’s breaking news. It should be made unacceptable if a channel broadcasts a fight between bollywood starlets as breaking news. Similarly, in this age of fight for TRPs, every channel makes every issue an ‘Exclusive’. This needs to be checked.

The News Broadcasting Authority set up a News Broadcasting Standards [Disputes Redressal] Authority to act as an independent regulator. It will be chaired by former chief justice, JS Verma and has started operating since October 2, 2008. Other members include eminent personalities like Kiran Karnik [former NASSCOM president], Nitin Desai [economist], Dipanker Gupta [Sociologist] and Ramachandra Guha [Historian]. It will also include prominent editors like Vinod Kapri of India TV, B. V. Rao of Zee News, Milind Khandekar of Star News and Arnab Goswami of Times Now. They revealed a new set of rules and guidelines for broadcasting channels. The guidelines ban broadcasting of footage that could reveal security operations and live contact with hostages or attackers.

This is more acceptable to the channels as peers are doing the review and also because impact the credibility of a channel. According to Annie Joseh, NBA’s Secretary, the government cannot be allowed to censor what is being telecast as most include lapses of the government. She also added that any interference from the government would "imperil not just independent journalism, but the very process of investigation itself.” So, it is imperative that the guidelines are set down by the members of the media and that they themselves are the watchdogs.

Government cannot be allowed to interfere in the fourth estate, but there definitely is a need for some sort of regulators for the Indian broadcast industry, especially in a country like this one where illiteracy rides high.

[This appeared in the in-house newspaper of the Indian Institute of Journalism & New Media, on January 22 2009. It came as a news-analysis piece on the opinion & editorial page]